Before You Take That First Step Towards Parenting Like a Guru
Stepping onto the spiritual path called parenting requires that you clarify, for yourself, not only what is compelling enough to step on the path, but what is compelling enough to keep you walking on that path. People are often inspired to take that first step because it sounds exciting, feels exhilarating, and worthy of the commitment. Few follow through with the second, third, or fourth step. Why? Because it gets scary when we begin to stretch beyond our comfort zone. We begin to feel the discomfort of the reorientation that is naturally occurring as part of growing and shifting our
To Parent Like a Guru – Let Go of Everything You Think You Know About Everything
To parent like a guru – we inevitably learn to let go of everything we think we know about parenting. To parent like a guru, let go of how you perceive yourself as a parent or grandparent. Let go of the stresses and the worries, plus the hoped-for outcomes of all the blood, sweat & tears you have brought to this role as parent or grandparent thus far. Let go of doing it right, being perfect, never failing your children, or feeling like a failure yourself. Parenting like a guru requires letting go of all of that, and more. Parenting,
Declaring Your Place in the World: Check These Off Your To-Do List
Young, Daring and Unstoppable! In the late 60’s, the summer of my Junior year of high school, my sweetheart, Paul, and I took on a project of creating awareness in our small Island community in Michigan, of the importance of environmental support. Using an electric typewriter and the manual cranking mimeograph machine at the local library, we made over 1,000 pamphlets, listing the many ways to help the Islanders become aware of how we could save the planet: recycle, reuse, population control, small volume toilets, etc. I rode my bike around the Island carefully placing our answers to world devastation
Growing is Hard Work
I’m angry. Sometimes, like now, I hate my life “ not the part where I’m traveling and working internationally; not the part where I’m living on a secluded island that’s considered one of the most beautiful places on Earth; and, not when I’m working with clients that are empowering themselves to live in their brilliant creativeness. I’m angry and hate my life when I can’t have what I want when I want it. Being on a spiritual path, it’s inevitable that I would come to the realization that I am not in charge “ never was and never will be.
Do I Love My Life
Do I Love My Life? For years now, I’ve been aware that I wake up in the morning feeling slightly melancholy, with a small degree of anxiousness thrown in for good measure. I’m not depressed, though some might label it so. I just feel uninspired and unmotivated to jump out of bed. I guess the thought that runs parallel to these feelings is: What’s the point of my life for me? Sometimes, it just feels pointless. I delight when there are stimulations of some sort awaiting me, in which case I anticipate the day with enthusiasm. But when it feels
I May Have to Get a Job
Its easy to judge and assess success and failure based on a context that limits perception of potentiality and possibility. It takes daring to keep your eyes wide open when you take that step into what seems to be the leap! There is so much to see! I may need to get a job to meet some pressing financial commitments. Initially, I see this as a failure on my part “ that in this spiritual immersion work, I must have avoided or ignored some important step on this journey. Without knowing, perhaps that I took a detour, which has left
Six Practices for Cultivating Spiritual Competency in Our Children and Grandchildren
Okay, so I admit it: I’ve been immersed in the study and practice of spirituality for decades. I’ve had a lot to overcome, tear-down, and then rebuild “ more like a renovation of my Absolute Truths. Why? So that I can have a greater sense of understanding of the workings of the Universe, its Divine nature, and how I participate as an aspect of the Universe. First of all, I wish on no one the anguish of growing up within a religion that I experienced as void of spirituality. Perhaps my experiences as a child have led me to discover
Security and the Constant Temptation to Yield to Expediency
Security is a wonderful feeling, which all of us seek, yet few of us actually experience fully. Especially with the economic downturn “ no one is safe from the potential demise of the current world market. Almost four years ago, I took myself out of the game, as it were, in order to follow an intuition “ a calling, if you will, onto a trajectory that I knew would reap extraordinary rewards that I had not yet even imagined. In the tarot deck of cards, the Tower is one of twenty-two Major Arcana cards. The image is a large burning
When is Enough Enough?
Creating yourself as who you want to be can be anxiety provoking. You have no idea what your fullest potential looks like; it’s all unknown. Are you curious enough to endure anxious moments of not knowing for the sake of finding out? Are you willing to be fierce in your discipline, enough to practice 100% accountability, living into integrity, and aligning your actions with your highest truth? Can you be compassionate enough with yourself through this exploration, to allow yourself to fumble and be humbled by this amazing process of realizing your highest self, highest truth and highest potential? Can
Enough is Enough
Creating yourself as who you want to be can be anxiety provoking; you have no idea what your fullest potential looks like; it’s all unknown. Are you curious and courageous enough to endure anxious moments of not knowing for the sake of finding out? Are you willing to be fierce in your discipline, enough to practice 100% accountability, living into integrity, and aligning your actions with your highest truth? Can you be compassionate with yourself through this exploration, allowing yourself to fumble and be humbled by this amazing process of realizing your highest self, highest truth and highest potential? Can
Dilemmas of Being
Knowing that you are always Oneness, always human, always choice-making, and always in your circumstances, now what? We are immersed in a multidimensional reality, and depending on which domain you focus on, there are conflicting commitments staring you down, at every turn. Within each Domain, you have a set of beliefs, perceptions, values and priorities: In the Domain of Oneness, you are committed to experiencing union with the Divine, harmony with nature, people, and with all being. Peace, grace and serenity are what we are committed to. At the same time, we are committed to avoiding an experience of emptiness,
Domains of Awareness
Through teaching and coaching, this model of awareness organically emerged, and it is foundational to a whole-being perspective of self-empowerment; and, I believe, to this adventure of spiritual immersion and self-discovery. If we do not attend to all domains of our being, we limit the full potentiality of the expression of our essential nature. Moreover, I believe we are here to be the fullest expression of our essential self. This, to me, is the destination toward which we are heading. Through realizing how we "be" in all domains of awareness, we cultivate an awakening and responsiveness to the multidimensional nature
Stepping into the Inner Adventure
Unless you accept inner adventure as a way of life, discovery will not come to you. Do it for the adventure, self-discovery is born of direct experience. (Nisagardatta, I Am That. p. 434P). The reality of the world we live in today requires that we prepare ourselves for the adventures that come to us throughout our lifetime. Escalating personal, social, environmental, and world crisis push against our doors of denial and ignorance to bring forth true, firsthand experiences of what it is like to be you in human form. The ways of the past are gone! You are invited to
Spiritual Immersion: Taking the Plunge
Introduction Spiritual Immersion is a process of revealing the ever deeper and richer layers of our spirit-selves. This Spirit-Self resides within our human form and can only be fully known through direct, personal experience. Only through this direct experience can you explore, experiment and discover your truth and live that truth. I believe we have come onto this planet to experience the fulfillment of our human spirit. We can only do this through the self-empowering, direct experience of our humanness. The intention of this book is to inspire you to choose consciously to immerse yourself “ just as an experiment,
What I’ve Learned, Thus far, on My Spiritual Journey
Transformation is not a one stop shop. There’s so many ways to transform and so many things to learn along the path. Here’s what I’ve learned to be true, at least for myself over the past few years: 1. There is only one source of currency / income. It may appear to come from your job, a personal or bank loan, inheritance or from your credit cards; but without the Universal Source of all that is, the currency would not be flowing from those sources. If the currency you are needing is not forthcoming in the form you think is
5 Easy Steps to Shift from Self-Ignoring to Self-Love
I tell you, truthfully, that if all of us self-help enthusiasts would put into practice all the beautiful, inspirational advice we see on Twitter, in books and blogs, we’d put therapists, psychologist, and a lot of medical doctors out of business. I believe it’s possible that we are beginning to outsmart most mental health professionals. And as we do that, our physical well-being increase and dis-ease decreases. The dilemma is that as much as we want to have sweeter and easier lives, we are afraid of change. And, as much as we know, we aren’t using our intelligence much at
How did I ever get along without a … 4 people you can’t live without as a Successful Self-employed Person
Remember, for some of us, when we couldn’t imagine why anyone would need a microwave oven, an email address, laptop computer or a smart phone. Now, we can’t imagine living without them. As a person in business for myself, I’ve attempted for years to do things by myself, because I believed I couldn’t afford to hire people to do it for me. Now, I can’t afford not to hire people to do it for me. You probably think that I now have money that I didn’t have before, and that’s how I can afford to hire support. That’s not it
Generating Generosity of Spirit with 2 Small Practices and 4 Suggestions
Isn’t it great “ the holiday season is here again. AHHHHHHHHHHH!! I actually started writing this piece a year ago but found I hadn’t enough experience with my subject to write about it. So, these past twelve months, I’ve been playing with the experience of generosity. What it is; what it feels like in my body; what allows me to act generously or withhold it. It’s been a fun exercise and the outcome is I’m far more generous than I ever imagined. Who would have guessed that being generous could create such an awakening to some new sensations or qualities
Making Your Life a HELL YES
Life is moving very fast for me these days. Lately I’ve been using the metaphor of reaching cruising altitude, pulling the throttle back just a bit and just enjoying the ride. As I fly back and forth from Seattle to San Jose, the jet I’m on usually flies at about 39,000 ft. Now, that’s high! You’ve got to be big and powerful to fly at that altitude. It wasn’t long ago that my own sense of bigness and sense of power hardly got me off the ground. It was twenty years ago that a friend of mine gave me a
I’m Grateful for My Teeth
In my thirties I was alone and depressed. I was in a bad relationship; living far away from my children, living and working on the edge of Canada in the Province of Nova Scotia. I isolated myself from anyone who could or would be a friend. Dark nights, crushing days; I had no idea that life could get any better for me. I was a therapist at the time, supporting individuals and families recovering from drug and alcohol addictions. I loved my work. I loved my clients. And, because I was fairly new to the fields of therapy and
Four Basic Questions for Sidestepping Writer’s Block
I’m surprised that people are requesting from me coaching around writer’s block. However, when I consider that over six years, I’ve written a couple of children’s stories, five books “ with the sixth on the way, plus hundreds of blogs, I realize that I guess I know a bit about writing and something about sidestepping writer’s block. Of course, as a coach, I have a few questions for you that I believe will assist in shifting from blocked to feeling the flow and going with it. 1.) Why Write? Any creative endeavor wants to be respected as just that. If
To Complete, To Heal and To Save: Four Practices to Keep Relationships Clear of Tangles
Every relationship I’ve been in with a man has had the intention to complete, to heal and to save me. I’ve been separated from my husband for nearly two years. My life is full of delightful connections with people I love, work I love to do and with the beauty that surrounds me. Truly I lack nothing. However . . . Though, I know I lack nothing, how do I be in a world, which from the very beginning of life impresses upon my imagination that without a man, a one true love, who will be with me forever and
4 Ways to be a Valued Grandparent
"When are you coming back, Grannie?" "What did you say?" Andrew is not quite 3 years old. We skype and facetime every couple of weeks. He has four other long distance grandparents plus a huge fan club of friends of the family. Elissa, my daughter repeats Andrew’s question, as if I didn’t hear it the first time. "He wants to know when you are coming back to visit." I knew what Andrew had asked; I just didn’t believe my ears. He wants me to come back to visit. I’m touched deeply by his question and his desire for me to
Home Again, But Where is Home?
It isn’t unusual for adventurers to return home not only physically weary, but energetically crazed. We are, after all, energetic beings. And, moving around the globe, engaging in the energetic fields of various cultures, as well as amongst the emotional field of thousands of people; well, it takes its toll. Though this can be really uncomfortable, it isn’t at all a bad thing! All that stimulation creates a release process, which inevitable discharges dense, useless energy; making way for a lighter, higher vibrational me. YEY! I arrived home to Orcas, a week ago today. We are experiencing some severe weather
What are Your Four Truths You Live By?
Last night, my son Zach and I watched a documentary titled Samsara. It’s a beautiful film with no voices to explain the images depicting the cycle of life, death and rebirth “ Samsara. Within this film, images of nature are woven together with images of people, cities, industry and many elements of a societies, religions and cultures. Some of the images are painful to witness, but they do portray the aspects of samsara that are part and parcel to the life cycle and the world we live in today. These have to do with what would be considered animal cruelty,